December is here, and so as every year (getting predictable, isn't it...), the time has come to commence the celebration of all the things that we love about Elma - the Golden Apple Awards! It seems that I have taken over the main organiser's relay baton from Kopaka, with our server guru stepping down to the role of a humble juror (and, unavoidably but immensely valuably, the provider of IT support). Furthermore, sunl has decided to resign from his role, and his shoes are now occupied by jblaze. Welcome!

Because of the late time of the year, but also because of the amount of effort inevitably involved, we have decided to keep things (that is the categories and the voting system) exactly as they were last year. We are well aware that the voting website is likely not the single most ergonomic website you've ever used, but, ladies and gentlemen, it is what it is. On the bright side, this means that you will not have to suffer through the painful process of learning a new system from scratch!

The first step of the annual GAA journey, as always, is community suggestions in the categories you may find further down this post. The amount of happenings in each category varies year to year, and this one will certainly be no exception. Notably, the tragic death of ville_j's recsource.tv means that the mining for replays is going to be more difficult than in the last few years. Fortunately, Zweq has come to the rescue with his own version (http://recs.zamppe.com/), which, although not as extensively developed as ex-recsource, still provides a great platform for replay sharing. Kudos Zweq!

Although the period for nominations ends with the stroke of midnight at the end of this year (31 December 2018, in case there's doubt), we have decided to extend the first step for a week, in order to maximise the time we will have to scan through all battle replays from 2018 on elmaonline.net. (You were planning to do that, weren't you?) The deadline for community suggestions, which you'll also find at the bottom of the voting instructions post (below), is 23:59 EET (GMT+2, Finnish time) on Sunday, 6 January 2019.

Please post your suggestions in this topic! There is no limit on the number of suggestions or posts you can make, but editing your own suggestions post until the deadline would be greatly appreciated. We would like to ask that you focus especially on the replay, battle replay, and level categories, as they are exceptionally difficult to manage for the jury. Also, please note that all internal WRs are taken into consideration in step two automatically, so there is no need to copy them in.

Contribution
Abula - Authoring of the "History of Elasto Mania" article
danitah - Creation of countless levels and contests, EOL moderator
iCS - Production of over 10h of world-class videos; creation of EOL shirts
jonsykkel - Development of okeSL, a new saveload tool
Kopaka - Continued support of the EOL server and site; provision of a private server for FEM & PEM; development of the new EOL site; GAA lead juror, EOL moderator
Markku - Improvements to the EOL server code; GAA juror; EOL moderator; status of a knowledgeable and skillful mentor and role model of the community
nick-o-matic - Organisation of FEM18, including FFC7 and FEM quiz
pawq - GAA juror; EOL moderator; maintenance of the best internal TTs list
Stooq - Organisation of PEM18; development of eolcup.pro, a new tool for hosting contests
Zweq - Development of recs.zamppe.com, the current recsource replacement

Achievement
adi - Improving Tm's Polevault Olympics record by 10 levels to PoleO627, and finishing all previous levels, with a total of 320 WRs out of 328
danitah - Contributions to exposure and understanding of wheelpops and their usage in hoyla levels, notably resulting in the biggest breakthrough in history in the most iconic internal level (Warm Up) and an impressive WR-table debut
finman - Making the biggest improvement since 2003 in Fruit in the Den, by improving the WR from 56.80 to 56.43
skint - Finishing the whole idol pack within 24 hours of its release (463 levels)
Spef - Achieving a personal total time of 34 minutes
Spef - Making the biggest improvement in history in Warm Up, by improving the WR from 13.88 to 13.79
Zero - Winning 12 out of 15 Beer Battle events in FEM18, including 10 in a row (4-13)
Zero - Winning the Virri 24h level pack competition, including the best total time and reaching all secret areas
Zweq - Making by far the biggest improvement in history in Hooked, by improving the WR by 0.43s from 16.94 to 16.51 (the second biggest improvement in history (#115) was 0.18s); it's also the biggest absolute improvement in a sub-20s level since Hill Legend in 2007, also by Zweq (#264)
Zweq - Making the biggest improvement since 2003 in Downhill, by improving the WR from 43.48 to 41.95

Categories explainedInternalist:The best players in the 54 internal levels.

Externalist:The best players in levels that are not internals or battles.

Battler:The best players in battles held in EOL.

Designer:The best at creating levels.

Breakthrough:Awarded to a person who has made a big improvement, impact or comeback in any aspect of the game during the year. Candidates can be eligible for Breakthrough in 3 subcategories:

1. Internals.
2. Externals and/or battles.
3. Level design.

The breakthrough award cannot be awarded to the same person multiple times for the same subcategory. When suggesting a candidate, you should note which subcategory you are suggesting them for.

WR:Both single and multi WRs in the internals are eligible. Note that WRs must be published in an official WR table during the GAA period to be eligible.

Replay:This category is limited to the best replays that are made anywhere except battles. In the Replay category, only replays that have been publicly shared as actual .rec files will be eligible. So, even if your run is included in an Elma movie, it won't be eligible for the Replay award unless you have released the actual replay file.

Battle replay:The best replays made in battles. This is not exclusive to EOL battles, but also includes other types of short battles, typically under 1 hour, such as external total time battles held at FEM.

Style:The best new style that someone has pulled off. Needs to be showcased through a replay or a replay in a movie. Both live runs and saveload runs are accepted.

Saveload:This category is for "all things SL". You can suggest replays, styles, WRs, or any other piece of saveload (art)work.

Level:The best levels released during the GAA period. Any and all kinds of levels are eligible.

Contest:This is any sort of competition held by the community, including but not limited to cups, level packs and battle cups.

Art:Any type of Elma-related art is eligible. This can include replay movies (such as EDQ, advertisement movies for cups, etc.), real-life movies such as Elma Crime, images/artwork, music, and other types of art. Note that one kuski can only have one nomination spot for each type of art, but you do not need to consider this when making suggestions.

Contribution:For those who have made a significant contribution to the scene in any form, such as programs, websites, contest organisation, resource management, or any other type of contribution.

Achievement:Any notable accomplishment, including but not limited to playing and designing.

Collaboration:Includes any type of collaboration between kuskis, whether within a team or not, such as cooperation in cups or contests, cooperative level making or cup organisation, or joint saveload work.

Juror's Choice:An award introduced in 2014, the Juror's choice is an entirely jury-decided award that can be given to any person(s) within the scene for any reason deemed appropriate. The community can freely suggest candidates for this category, however, the category will not be voted for by the community in the third step of voting, and nominees will be kept hidden until the final show.

Step 1
The community can make suggestions for the categories. Making suggestions in the first step is not necessary for voting in step 3, but a wide range of suggestions is still highly appreciated and needed. Please make these suggestions in this topic.

Deadline: Sunday, 6 January 2019, 23:59 EET (GMT+2, Finnish time)

Step 2
The jury will choose nominees for each category. The jury members will choose the candidates according to their experience and knowledge (they will also be reading, and strongly taking into consideration, the community suggestions).

Deadline: Wednesday, 30 January 2019, 23:59 EET (GMT+2, Finnish time)

Step 3
After the nominees for each category are made available, the Elma community can vote. Jurors vote as regular community members. If you want to send your votes via Mopolauta, your Mopolauta account has to be registered before the start of the first step. The votes should be sent to pawq (me). You can also send your votes in a private message to pawq (@pawq#0659) in the Elma Discord. You don't have to vote in every category, but if you do vote in some category, you must pick a full top 5. In short: choose top 5 or nothing.
The voting happens on the GAA voting website. After voting the website will give you a key, which you should send to pawq in one of the aforementioned ways before the deadline. The votes have to be given in ranked order, from 1st to 5th. Each 1st position will give 5 points, each 2nd position will give 4 points, etc. The jury will assemble these points when the voting process has ended. You can only vote and send a PM once. Do not make your votes public.

Deadline: Thursday, 21 February 2019, 23:59 EET (GMT+2, Finnish time)

Step 4
The jury will collect the top 5 for each category according to the community votes. The point system will be as follows: 5 points to every first position, 4 points to every second position, etc.
The final top 5s will be used in the final show.

Step 5
If the voter turnout in step 3 is equal or greater than 30, then this step is skipped, that is the result of the community voting is the final result of the competition, and the winners are chosen solely through community voting. However, if the voter turnout is below the threshold, a secondary voting system will be employed:
The jury members will rank nominees in all categories, using the same point system as in step 3 (5 points for 1st, 4 points for 2nd, etc.). Moreover, 10 points will be given to the nominees who won in community voting, and 5 will be given to the runners-up. The jury members' votes will not be public. In the event of a tie, the candidate who got most points from the community in the second step will win. If there still is a tie, the one who got the most 5 points will win, then 4 points, etc. If the winner is not resolved this way, the jury will come together and discuss the matter to decide the winner.

The final show, where the winners are announced, will be held on the Elma Discord #gaa channel, but will likely be bridged to IRCnet (channel #gaa).

Internalist
Spef. Many godlike times many wrs 34tt
Finman. Many styles and wr. He is amazing and a huge part of spef pushing forward and should not be unmentioned.

Externalist
Probaby adi or finman
Battler
Zero as always
Zweq is never nominated for battler but he is always an amazing battler.

Designer
divan

Breakthrough has made an very breakthrough this year and is much more widely used I feel this should be recognized
Danitah playing

WR
Wu 1388
Zweq uphil
Zweq hoked
Osv all mentioned anyway.

Style
warm up

Battle replay
too many to watch to find best to suggest

Replay
too many to watch to find best to suggest

Level
too many to play to find best to suggest

Contest
Elma Grand Prix 6 by Ruben it was during fem and nice

ArtWarm ap video by iCS it's great art very video

Contribution
Markku eol server fixes

Achievement
Spef 34 tt

Saveload
jonsykkel okesl programming

Collaboration
8x8 chain ff level by kuskis

Juror's Choice
Pawq. Pawq is involved pretty much everywhere there is something going on in the scene to help out and contribute and I think thats nice and worth to be awarded but all random small things adding up to hugeness will never be enough to win on its own.
He can be an asshole when he is angry though

Internalist:Spef, Zweq these mans did the most of 2018 wrs, and dunno who to choose

(may i add more than 1 for each category?:/)

Battler:jblaze Seriously, jbl almost always wins balles, playing them in any time not depends on amount of pro players there. Also, (with almost same amount of played levels) he has mush better win ratio than Zero in normal battles (56% vs 36%). And better ratio in all battles (34.5% vs 32.5%).
+ Zero ofc

Breakthrough:Cookie, Mira (in internals) and still, who is cookie?:/

WR:Hooked 53

Contest: danitah`s Onion Cup with different not normal battle types. Very nice it was))

Contribution:eolcup.pro site. Very cool and useful thing, was done in November, but have been already used in many many competitions and cups.
+Also Zweq`s zweqsourse site.

pawq wrote:It's worthwhile mentioning as many as you can, cuz the point of the first step is to make sure we don't miss anyone worth considering (not just potential winners, but potential top10s)

So yeah, pls suggest as many as you can, then in the second step we'll pick 10 per category out of all those suggested here. Got 30 replays you think may be worthy? Fucking perfect, post them all! The more people/things are suggested, the smaller the chance that we'll miss something out. Also, it's good to write even a very short comment justifying your suggestion (apart from the obvious, like replay/level categories), cuz it helps us make educated decisions (as you've been doing so far guys, thanks!)

Wasn't too active this year which shows as a lack of suggestions for some of the categories. I know those categories are very hard to come up nominees for so I'll try to remember / dig up at least something later :p
Also might add some reasonings later.

Contribution:
Stooq Cup Tool
The people who organized FEM
The people who organized PEM
dani for keeping the scene alive with all kinds of contests
History of Across and Elma by Abula
Target list revisions

Achievement:
adi winning the most apple battles during year, dethroning Markku who has won the most apples every year since 2011

Juror's Choice:
Cabin lady for letting us have FEM in the Virri farm for 5 years (apparently not renting the place anymore going forward)

Contribution
- pawq, always willing to support the scene and lend a helping hand in various projects.
- Kopaka, Elma scene wouldn't be the same without Kopaka. Many years of service behind the scenes.
- px, still updating the WRs more or less frequently after ~20 years.
- Juish, heard he made an especially big donation to the EOL server.
- Markku, The Godfather of Elma. Always mellow, humble and helpful. And ofc very skilled player as well.
- Zweq, for creating and maintaining recs.zamppe.com

Achievement
- Spef, 34TT

Saveload

Collaboration

Juror's Choice
- Don't know much about the cabin lady but she sounds awesome. She probably doesn't know how appreciated she is so I suggest we send a GAA her way! Good idea roope!

breakthrough internals: cookie, mira (entered activity in internal scene and improved a lot), danitah (did first wr as 47tt man and also perfected an entire new style in the first internal level, started a relatively huge improvement row)

Contribution
- Abula (creation of the History of Elasto Mania article)
- danitah (countless levels and contests, beating heart of the community)
- iCS (creation of countless world-class videos for the community, creation of shirts for shirtless people)
- jon (okeSL development)
- Juish (a sizeable donation for the EOL server)
- Kopaka (continued support of the EOL server and site, provision of a private server for FEM & PEM, development of the new EOL site, GAA lead juror)
- Markku (continued role as the knowledge and skill guru of the community, development of the EOL server code, GAA juror)
- nick-o-matic (organisation of FEM18, including FFC7 and FEM quiz)
- pawq (active EOL mod and GAA juror, maintenance of the best int tts list)
- Smibu (continued development of Elmanager)
- Stooq (organisation of PEM18 and development of eolcup.pro)
- Zweq (development of recs.zamppe.com, our current recsource replacement)

Internalist
- Spef many wr, grabbed tt lead.
- Finman one wr, eforts in background.
- Jblaze speedrun and 1htt progress and renaults.
- Arzenik probably played ints the most all year and achieved a tt of 41.low, 3 years~ at this pace to get his first wr

Externalist
Those that did oke in idol pack, i really dont have any other memories this year:
- John
- Finman
- Adi
- Blaztek
- Zero for winning virri contest)
- Spef did oke in virri pack

Battler
the usual toughest opponents as I remember how battling went during FEM
- Zero
- Adi
- Markku
- Jblaze
and then the new stars on the rise who are starting to cause troubles:
- Blaztek
- Fejm
- Mira
honorary mention goes to:
- jonsykel for beating me in a batle after i told him ill beat him

Designer
unfortunately haven't played much externals this year but...
- dani, just for providing a big external pack for everyone to play
- ramone, mandatory annual suggestion for the best levmaker of al times
- umiz, mandatory annual suggestion for the 2nd best levmaker of al times
- zebra, solely for the virri pack effort and the provided gaming experience
- tej, out of the box design-style
- TL, same as tej

Breakthrough
- Fejm

WR
These would all definitely be pain in the ass to beat:
- WU 13.79
- Flat track 14.64
- Uphill Battle 19.76

Contribution
OKESL - jonsykkel, great tool, but not used much yet, however imo its use will raise in the folowing years and milasl will fade away, the only reason to use milasl in the future is to do eol-realistic low fps practicing. I think this should win begouse it realy is quite amazing piece of software.. even linus and carmack would aprove.. thank you.. im from iran
elmastats -
cup gak website - impressive website by the guy whose name i can't remember

Achievement
Spef u35tt no question this will win
Dani pop science, reminder to us all to use our fuking brains, although we kinda knew about changing fps for pops, it wasn't well known / understood until this new science wave that was started after WU style. It all lead to the 75-79 fps one frame brake pops osv that completely destroy some very specific höyl levs, and might be useful in other ints in the future such as hooked, but probably not.

Externalist
zero, one of the best externalist of all time
zamppe, the z bois.

Battler
zero simply amazing man
Blaztek great skills and good devotion
mena often wins if he plays

Designer
Dani_Tah new types of battles, creative, great levels
tej oldschool levels wich i like alot
TL still amaze me with his weird looking levels
zo3 great levels with a lot of energy in. Also isnt afraid of doing shit levels.
Hosp good design and always good flow levels
error great designer who puts alot of effort in his levs
jblaze often smart levels
Blaztek nice levels with often cool tricks needed
Henkka i like his old school levels. Often very enjoyable.

dat 38.95 is actually a live run (which I beated later too, have 38.67). I seem to recall SLing that lev, but can't find any reks :S (actually they might be at home pc, I'll ask gf to check.) anyway, thx for suggesting this :>

dat 38.95 is actually a live run (which I beated later too, have 38.67). I seem to recall SLing that lev, but can't find any reks :S (actually they might be at home pc, I'll ask gf to check.) anyway, thx for suggesting this :>

Compiled suggestions from the GAA suggestions thread 2018 (excluding what I have included in my suggestions post in this thread, such as contests). Some recs not included because of recsource rippage :(

Contribution
- Markku - for his contributions as a role model and leader in the community for over 15 years and for his countless other contributions to the elma scene and golden apple awards. (Grace's post)

Achievement
- adi - first player to reach all Virri secret areas
- Zero - winning 12 of 15 beer battle events, including 10 in a row (4-13)
- Zero - reached all Virri secret areas, won the Virri 24h level pack competition
- Zero - reaching 50% win rate in overall battles
- skint - finishing whole idol pack in less than 24 hours since release: There's 463 levels in pack, some of them are quite hard, and there's still only one other person who has finished pack when almost 2 months have passed, and players have played it quite actively also. So I think it's pretty nice achievement.

Skipping categories for now where I think everything worth mentioning is mentioned already.

I'm putting some of my own levs in level category. Feels a bit silly but it just feels too random if other people will put my best levs. In the same way, my level suggestions for other people will be based on a small random sample of their levels. I urge everyone to do this with recs and levs. In the end you are the only one who has the full picture of your own levs/recs.

Wish we would have a bunch of idol recs to choose from, hopefully for 2019 instead! I said earlier that I wasn't planning to make a video, but now I'm thinking some kind of mass-release of recs could be a good event, especially since I think no one shared any WR yet. So I'm asking for people to hold on recs a bit longer. Maybe video is too big project (iCS don't worry ) so could do some other kind of event, duno, let's see later.

levels:title_sf by HospHarbtl75 by Grace
(Wrote about these two already in viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9856&p=262455#p261499 but wanted to mention again here)muiz9786 by umiz: nice multi route lev. also i just now discovered the fancyboost used in this lev, didnt have it installed when i played it originally. Looks really cool!muiz9513muiz9654muiz9658... I'm sure these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to awesome umiz levs, since I only got to check a small amount.tej066 by tejharc800 by icsAC18_12: chain apple battle, really enjoyed playing this, and also really cool the way it is put together imo. Not the standard way of making chain levs (either assigning an area to each designer, or making parts one by one), instead AndrY just asked us to make 'int08-sized' parts and he would put it together. As a designer I really enjoyed seeing how this turned out. Also fun in-lev map!Fyr685 by RamoneFFC707 by zero, fun unique designDAFF348: I think this is my best levelmaking achievement of 2018. Turned out way better than I hoped for when I made the levelmaking challenge to myself. See iCS video of it also.FFC704: Talked a bit about this lev a while back also, don't remember exactly where though. Basically I realized after starting to make it that it felt a bit like a Jappe2 FF, which made me decide to make it a tribute lev to Jappe2 and try to make similar type of FF that he typically makes.Pipip001: Happy with all aspects of this. If I continue pack with same quality it could be good pack. Hope I find that motivation.PINK004PINK005: I'm happy with all PINK levs, which is also part of the reason why I haven't continued. I'm afraid of messing up average lev quality by releasing worse levs and messing up pack... 4 and 5 are best ones so far imo.

Honorable mentions:henk0036 by Henkka: Great levMUTEKI06PINK001,PINK002,PINK003DAFF352: Adventure lev type FF. Would have liked to polish some parts a bit, and add visuals, which is why it's not part of my main suggestions.PE18co levs: All of these levs are nice and playable in singleplayer also, however I couldn't decide on one or two stand-out levs which is why it's hard to suggest a particular lev from them though...

Edit:
I was urged by pawq to choose my favorite levs from idol pack. To be honest it's a bit weird to look through the levs now. The designing process was quite intense, made all levs in three weeks, and I haven't looked much at the levs since then, so there are some that I hardly remember now when I look at them. There are some that are still quite memorable for me though:
409
423
440: Didn't remember this. Nice visual idea, otherwise not that special maybe.
446:
454
461

I looked only at the 4XX, that's where the biggest effort levs are concentrated, and it would take too much time to look at all. Could be other levs worth mentioning though. Also I'm sure the players look at levs differently, it's quite big factor for me that the levs are aesthetically pleasing.

- skint - finishing whole idol pack in less than 24 hours since release: There's 463 levels in pack, some of them are quite hard, and there's still only one other person who has finished pack when almost 2 months have passed, and players have played it quite actively also. So I think it's pretty nice achievement.

Just have to add my voice to how insane this is. Extreme devotion to pull this off (I'm still struggling to finish that damn 462!).

Was it cast for the mass who burn and toil?
Or for the vultures who thirst for blood and oil?Rules | FAQ

Step 1 of the 2018 Golden Apple Awards has ended, which means that the jury will now begin collating the suggestions made in this topic, together with their own, and will then begin the selection of nominees for each category. We are aiming to complete this process by Sunday, 20 January, with a possible extension until 27 January, depending on juror availability. An announcement will be made as soon as the nominees have been selected, and voting will then commence.

You are still welcome to post further suggestions during the next week (until 13 January), but please post them in a separate post, rather than editing your existing suggestions post, as we will have already collated the existing suggestions. After 13 January we are unlikely to accept any further suggestions, except in the exception of exceptional circumstances.

Finally, we are sad to announce that Ruben has decided to quit the jury team. May the force be with him!

Atm you can assume we will follow the same sharing format as 2017 (top-5 full points revealed) unless there's a huge call for a shift in approach in the community. We haven't discussed this in any great detail, but the response to top-5 was quite good last year.

In the past, there has been suggestions that revealing full results may not be as constructive as it seems for those who were nominated but came in 9th-10th place, as it's possible some people can get 0-1 votes and feel very bad about it. Top5 seems like a nice compromise between the two.